Once schools stop grading, colleges will be forced to evaluate applicants, based on the whole student, not just on numbers.

Most people who comment like the idea of eliminating numbers, percentages and letters. They see the obvious advantages to using narrative feedback, rather than measurements. Some people use systems like SE2R, creating ongoing conversations about learning with their students.

The skeptics offer a variety of arguments and examples as to why they prefer traditional grades. Here are a few of their points, along with my responses.

The traditional grades debate

Argument: Parents need to see that their children are learning, and they only know how to do this with grades.

Response: When parents read detailed narrative feedback about what has been learned, they appreciate this much more than numbers and letters. They have to see a system of feedback, in order to know it exists as a possible alternative to grades.

Argument: Grades lead to Grade Point Averages, which help students get into colleges. Without GPAs, colleges lose a major asset for judging applicants.

Response: This archaic model of the college tail wagging the K-12 dog has to stop. Many colleges are already eliminating SAT scores for admission and some no longer value GPAs. Once schools stop grading, colleges will be forced to evaluate applicants, based on the whole student, not just on numbers.

Argument: The best skilled people, like surgeons, only become the best by the competition created by grades. Would you want someone operating on you who didn’t get A’s?

Response: The notion that competition in the classroom creates the best learners is an unsubstantiated myth made by educators who don’t know any other way to teach. People become the best at what they do, because of determination. They decide to be the best, and they work harder than anyone else. If you doubt this, read Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. Michael Jordan didn’t need grades to be the best basketball player in the world. Itzhak Perlman didn’t need grades to become the best violinist.

Argument: Most schools still mandate end-of-marking-period report cards. If teachers don’t grade activities, projects and tests along the way, they won’t be able to provide a report card grade.

Response: Teachers rely too heavily on the “But my principal says. . .” excuse to validate bad practice. As long as classroom teachers continue grading, schools will continue sending report cards to parents. It’s a tired cycle that educators continue to replicate, because that’s the way we’ve always done it. The classroom teacher has the ultimate say about what happens in the room. Throw out numbers and letters. Provide meaningful narrative feedback. Use tests only to assess learning, never as a punitive measure. Then, until report cards disappear (and they will, one day), allow your students to decide on the final grade with you. It’s a beautiful conversation that every teacher will love.

There are a host of arguments not addressed here. (Feel free to make your case in the comment section.)

So, what’s the best argument against traditional grades? Imagine that they never existed. How do you think we would assess learning?

bfuller181 I appreciate your detailed comment, and I’ll address what I can. If you read much of my work (plenty of grading and feedback stuff on this blog, and several books), you’ll know that I tend to be pointed in my commentary and highly critical of the establishment. I don’t dismiss objections; actually, this post is meant to deal with a few of the ones I hear most often.

Of course teams track stats on athletes. They aren’t in school and the numbers, in this case, are not designed to measure learning. Surgeons are, indeed, judged by their patients and hospital administrators. Again, their learning isn’t being measured in this case. My point is that we don’t need to measure learning for a student to become a great surgeon, athlete or anything else.

Conversations should occur daily in the classroom and be based on a wide array of formative assessments. I don’t think they should be identical, because students are different. Feedback should, in most cases, happen digitally and be shared with parents as an ongoing assessment of learning.

I’ve never suggested that this isn’t hard work; it’s much more difficult than placing numbers on activities. Thanks for commenting; I hope you’ll return in the future.

I’ve been using Standards-Based Grading for 3 years now and I agree with most of what you’re saying here, but I think you go a little too far dismissing any and all objections out of hand. In some cases, you’re asking more than a classroom teacher can realistically give while (IMO) making the teacher feel bad for not jumping on board.

I love the idea of having a conversation with my students, but when does that conversation take place? During class? How often and for how long? How are parents brought into the conversation? Electronically? How are stakeholders informed about the conversation? The answers to many of these questions is honestly not something a classroom teacher has control over. Just saying “stop making excuses” argument does nothing to find solutions to the problem.

Surgeons may not be graded in the same sense that students are, but surgeons certainly are evaluated by both objective and subjective metrics which are then turned into data which is used to gauge an individual surgeon’s effectiveness.

Michael Jordan was certainly intrinsically motivated, but does every professional basketball player have the same level of desire to be the best? Teams do track statistics on any number of variables to “grade” a given player’s potential, and players at all levels can use data based feedback to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses.

Conversations are certainly a useful tool, but it’s unrealistic to expect a teacher/coach/mentor/boss/college/etc. to have an identical conversation with every possible interested party in order to ensure that everyone has the same information. That’s kinda how grades came into existence in the first place…